Jim Carr died. His wife purchased a 10k headstone. Church didn’t like it. Wife is suing.
And… what could cause such a brouhaha?
Fair warning, you may have to scrap those NASCAR-themed tombstone plans depending on your body’s future place of rest’s regulations.
Here’s what the church had to say:
The Rev. Jonathan Meyer, priest at St. Joseph Catholic Church, notified the monument maker that the headstone didn’t meet the cemetery’s standards and couldn’t be placed in the church’s century-old graveyard, The Republic reported. But Carr says in her lawsuit that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis Properties Inc., which owns the cemetery, never produced any regulations for the plot until more than a year after she tried to have the headstone installed in 2010.
Mrs. Carr disagrees.
Meyer says that the church knew about the plans for the headstone six weeks before Carr purchased it and that she was informed of the decision not to allow it in the cemetery and was encouraged to not purchase it. However, he did say that the regulations weren’t formally official until after Carr purchased the headstone. The archdiocese of Indianapolis says that issue is out of the court’s jurisdiction as it doesn’t fall within the bounds of the first amendment.
